Amy Remeikis

Of the three budgets Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls has delivered it is his most recent that appears the most difficult sell, especially to those already hurting enough to have been granted a concessions card. That financial help, thanks to federal budget cuts, will be slashed but the state government is yet to determine by how much.

Overview

Best described as 'vanilla', the budget, as predicted, contained no surprises, no big announcements, no bells or whistles. But the government has found $5.2 million to spend on the sequel to its $6 million 'Strong Choices' campaign - effectively the budget it wishes it could have handed down but can't without a win at the next election.

Taxes, fees, levies and charges stay where they are and no more cuts to frontline services are planned.

Mr Nicholls said the government "resisted the temptation" to raise taxes despite a $1 billion downturn in revenue from taxes, GST and royalties.

Advertisement

But neither is there any help.

Concessions cuts

Just a week before the budget was handed down the Queensland Competition Authority announced residential electricity prices would increase by about $200 a household. That increase came on top of a $270 increase the year before.

This budget contains no cost of living reprieves, no concessions, nothing to offset the rising cost.

And those who already received a helping hand - pensioners and seniors - will find their concessions cut after the federal government pulled $54.2 million of the funding it provided to Queensland for concessions in the next financial year.

Over the next four years, the state will be required to try and make up $233.2 million in federal funding cuts.

The state government has not cut the funding it spends on concessions, but neither will it replace the entirety of the federal funding.

What that means is still being determined, but one option the government is considering is a 15 per cent slice to concessions, which would mean rebates for electricity bills, rates, water bills, vehicle registration and public transport for pensioners and senior card holders would be cut by 15 per cent.

New policies

In a somewhat defensive budget speech Mr Nicholls - who described his first budget as the "most important in a generation" and littered his second with references to "confidence", "rebuilding", "resilience" and even a literary reference to Coleridge's Ancient Mariner with the debt playing the starring role as the albatross - conceded his latest offering wasn't anything to write home about.

"The budget I present today is not one of flashy new announcements and programs," he said.

"It is not a budget of big headlines or irresponsible spending sprees.

"It is a budget that is right for the times."

Tellingly, the 'most significant' new policy item - $406 million over five years to overhaul the state's child protection scheme - had already been announced. Outside the sector, it made barely a ripple in a populous more concerned about hip pocket impacts.

Handing a family business over to non-lineal descendants just got easier with the government extending the family primary production concession, which allows businesses to be "gifted", beyond a parent to a child.

Numbers

As for the numbers that underlined the budget, these barely raised an eyebrow.

The government had already announced its deficit had quadrupled from $664 million from the mid-year forecast to $6.1 billion, due largely to a downturn in coal royalties and a delay in natural disaster relief payments from the Commonwealth.

The state's LNG projects, nurtured under the previous state government, are nearing completion, transitioning from a period of investment to production. The positive effects of this won't be felt until 2015/16, with the Treasurer describing the transition as the "quantitative handbrake that constrains the headline growth rate" in the upcoming financial year.

Once production is ramped up it is expected to underpin a "surge" in exports that, "combined with an improved domestic economy, is forecast to boost economic growth to an 11-year high of around 6 per cent".

That growth will settle back down to about 4 per cent in 2016-17.

Unemployment will sit around 6 per cent with Treasury expecting it to drop to 5.5 per cent in 2016-17. The government made an election promise to cut unemployment to 4 per cent over six years in 2012. The government is still "on track" to achieve its balanced budget in 2015-16 and "in the absence of unavoidable shocks", a fiscal surplus for the financial year after.

Revenue has dropped another $1 billion, bringing the total down turn in revenue from taxes, royalties and GST to $5.4 billion since Mr Nicholls' first budget.

The state's economy is forecast to grow by 3 per cent, while government sector spending only increased by about 2.2 per cent in the last financial year.

What's Next?

All in all the 2014-15 budget had nothing to set it apart, nothing to elicit either contentment or, perhaps more importantly for a government heading to the polls, widespread anger.

But it will barely matter. All eyes will be on the what-we-would-do-if-we-could-do budget - the draft action plan - which offers millions of dollars for infrastructure, transport and all the bells and whistles governments dream of promising.

As long as the electorate agrees to let it invite private investment, sell or offer long-term leases of the state's electricity generators, power network, ports and commercial water infrastructure, which the government has valued at $33.6 billion. The government plans to spend three-quarters of that in debt reduction, dropping it from $80 billion to about $55 billion.

Mr Nicholls called it the "strongest and smartest choice".

Come early next year, the government will find out if the electorate agrees.